Fuzz to Folk: Trax of My Life

By Dr Ian Green

In Fuzz to Folk Ian Green chronicles his life so far; from Nation Service call-up to regular Army Service, to 30 years as a policeman and finally to founder of Greentrax, Scotland's leading traditional music label. Green has played a significant role in the resurgence and vitality of traditional and folk music in Scotland. His inspirational autobiography includes details of his involvement in the careers of Brian McNeill, Dick Gaughan, the McCalmans, Eric Bogle and many others. With Green's unique insight, Fuzz to Folk is an authority on the Scottish folk scene, and a fascinating glimpse into the life of the policeman on the street.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luath Press
• Release date: May 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913025830

Dr Ian Green

Dr Ian Green Hon. Doc. RSAMD was born in Forres, Morayshire in 1934, the son of a Highland piper and head gardener. The changing life in rural Scotland resulted in many moves until the family finally relocated to Edinburgh where Ian completed his education. He followed his father into gardening and began an apprenticeship. When National Service beckoned, Ian signed for three years in the army, serving as a vehicle mechanic in the REME, including two years in Korea and Japan. He was demobbed in 1955 holding the rank of full corporal. Another change of direction saw Ian join Edinburgh City Police, later Lothian and Borders Police, in which he served 30 years. During this time, he married his wife June and raised three children. Ian gained wide police experience in various specialised departments before being promoted to sergeant and latterly inspector, retiring in 1985. During his service Ian pursued an interest in folk music and was involved in many aspects of the music - as organiser of the Police Folk Club (Fuzzfolk), co-editor of Sandy Bell's Broadsheet, co-founder of the Edinburgh Folk Club, concert promoter and assistant to Dr John Barrow, director of the Edinburgh Folk Festival. In between times, Ian found time to grow and exhibit award-winning chrysanthemums, and represent Scotland in the Annual International Angling Match. In 1986, Ian launched Greentrax Recordings which has become one of the most successful independent record labels in the UK. Many awards have been bestowed upon Ian, including the Hamish Henderson Award for services to traditional music, entry into the Scots Trad Awards Hall of Fame, and culmina ting in an honorary doctorate from the RSAMD in 2006. This autobiography looks at Ian's active, varied and interesting life as he turned 76 years of age.

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PART I

A Wee Mistake.

CHAPTER ONE

the early years – always on the move

IWAS BORN ON the 29 January 1934 at the Greshop on the banks of the River Findhorn, Forres, Morayshire – I was a mistake! It didn’t bother me at that precise moment, although I bawled the house down about something! Being a mistake did, however, cause me some grief when I did eventually find this out and was, I believe, responsible for a bit of an inferiority complex I laboured under in later years. That complex also left me with an obsessive need to succeed above all else, in whatever I turned my hand to and, while this determination has tended to get in the way of relationships during my life, it has also resulted in me being able to accomplish things I lacked confidence for in the first place! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

According to my birth certificate I was born the son of John Whitecross Green, head gardener, and Mary Anne Bonnyman, domestic servant. I should have been named Iain, but I understand that my father met some friends for a dram or two on the way to the Registrar’s Office and he spelled my Christian name as Ian! I was the youngest of three ‘Greenies’ – my elder sister Elizabeth, six years older, and brother James (‘Jimmy’ or ‘Sonny’ as he was strangely nicknamed in his early years) who was three years my senior and always able to kick the living daylights out of me when we were growing up – and did! Elizabeth and I had a somewhat closer relationship until it was soured by events when I was in my teens. Like most families we had to play the ‘happy families’ game from time to time.

My father was head gardener on the modest Greshop Estate, but had served his apprenticeship on the much bigger estate and walled garden of Burgie Estate in Morayshire, where he underwent rigorous training. He had to stand to attention with his ‘bunnet’ doffed when the laird passed by! His first position as head gardener was apparently on an estate near Forfar but that was a short-stay venture, as were so many of Dad’s positions in the ’30s and ’40s. This was due, in no small way, to the forced closure of Scottish estates and the decline of the many wonderful walled gardens – caused by post First World War death duties, plus rising labour and other costs. Despite improvements in working conditions, the wages of a head gardener of those times still only provided a meagre existence and, even in later years when we were assured by the politicians that we had ‘never had it so good’, my parents remained close to the poverty line for much of their lives. They deserved much more but I never heard either complain about their lot and their philosophy throughout their lives remained – ‘there are many far worse off than us’.

Dad (back row, fourth from right) when he was a member of the Seaforth Highlanders Territorial Pipe Band, Forres.

Moray enjoys a wonderfully mild climate – something to do with the Gulf Stream – or so Dad assured me, although I was never really convinced by that one. No denying, however, the Moray Firth always enjoys more pleasant climatic conditions than other parts of Scotland, helping those highly skilled gardeners of the 19th and 20th centuries to produce high quality and often quite exotic fruit, flowers and vegetables within their high-walled, sheltered gardens. These were mainly to supply the estate house, always known to us on every estate we lived on as ‘the big house’. Dad was one of the best gardeners of his time and while his thorough training was based on practical experience, he had a natural gift, with gentle ‘green fingers’ and a love of the soil. Strangely his burning ambition as a young boy had been to learn the trade of saddler, but he was forced to abandon that notion because no apprenticeship was available. He had to turn to apprentice gardener to earn a meagre wage which was, nevertheless, desperately needed by his mother, Granny Green, who was eventually to give birth to a total of 13 children. I was privileged and proud to admire Dad’s gardening efforts, and saw him win many prizes at horticulture shows, especially in post WWII years. I was fortunate to learn some of his remarkable gardening skills in later years. Dad was also a pretty good Highland bagpipe player and for a while was a member of the Seaforth Highlanders Territorial Pipe Band in Forres, along with my Uncle Bill (Duncan).

‘Mam’, funny it was never Mum, was a great mother, even though it fell to her to administer the occasional (but always well deserved) dose of corporal punishment, believing as she did that to ‘spare the rod is to spoil the child’. This was referred to as a ‘leathering’ and in later life we jokingly teased Mam that Friday was bath night but also the night for a leathering whether we needed it or not (not true of course). The minor but effective physical punishment I was exposed to at home caused me no physical injury or any mental damage, but resulted in a relatively well-behaved child, with a good sense of discipline and consideration for others – something not always evident in the 21st century. Some of the badly-behaved children I come across nowadays leave me in no doubt that the pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction.

Mam totally devoted herself to looking after her beloved John, three children and the organisation of her home. She never spared herself in these pursuits and was particularly adept at managing the purse strings. We never went hungry or lacked the necessities of life, being always cleanly turned out, even in hand-me-downs, while enjoying a clean, warm home – even in difficult times. Mam was a wonderful cook of homely Scottish food, and one of the best bakers I have ever known. Her griddle scones, pancakes and many delights from the oven were something to behold. Her ‘clooty dumplings’ were a work of art and for years the sole but exciting birthday present the ‘Greenies’ received – if you found the silver three-penny piece in your slice, then even better! No expensive Christmas presents for us either, just one of Dad’s socks, hung up on the mantelpiece and filled by Santa with an apple, an orange, a few nuts (if available), a penny and maybe snakes and ladders or some similar simple game or toy. The strange thing is that these small gifts gave us immeasurable pleasure. This and the very commercial aspect of modern day Christmas were, I think, what eventually left me cold about this religious festival, although being an atheist may have contributed towards my desire to eventually dissociate myself from something I really do not believe in!

Yes, we were lucky children to be born to John and Mary Green and I feel fortunate to have been brought up by two such generous, honest and decent people, loved by everyone who knew them. They died within a few years of each other in the ’70s/’80s, and I miss them terribly to this day. I frequently dream that they are alive and back with us.

My first recollection as a child is of sitting on top of a cartload of swedes, pulled by one of those monstrous, but ever so gentle, Clydesdales so common on Scottish farms prior to the farm tractor revolution. Why that small incident should have stuck in my memory, I really don’t know, but it remains a vivid picture to this day. Dad had by then upped stakes from the Greshop, which I believe was put up for sale and later became part of an industrial estate, and was gardening on the Pluscarden Estate near Elgin. The only other recollection I have of Pluscarden is of a very stupid woman, a neighbour probably, who took me on a hunting expedition for, of all things, poisonous adders. These she proceeded to push and prod into various receptacles to be sold on, probably for medical experimentation. The snakes scared the living daylights out of me but, even worse, on the journey to and from Adder Hill, as it was known locally, I was forced to walk along the parapet of a bridge which seemed very high to me. I recall becoming hysterical and pleading to go home to Mam. I have no doubt that horrendous experience contributed to my subsequent uncontrollable fear of heights and severe vertigo. It also resulted in recurring snake-filled nightmares which continue to this day. That was my first introduction to an insensitive human being.

After a short stay at Pluscarden we were on the move again, this time to an estate near Rhynie in Aberdeenshire. Before all the packing boxes had been emptied, Dad had fallen out with the laird and we were off again to the Glen of Rothes, a shooting lodge set in that lovely valley between Rothes and Elgin. The lodge had yet another beautiful and prolific walled garden which produced all the usual fruits, flowers and vegetables. That was where I first tasted fresh apricots and nectarines. The conditions of employment for head gardeners always included free fruit and vegetables from the garden and fire logs and coal to heat the rent-free, ‘tied’ house. This did provide us with a very healthy fruit and veg diet. In addition, were the occasional hare, rabbit, pheasant, grouse, pigeon, haunch of venison and fresh salmon supplied by the estate gamekeeper, who presumably benefited from Dad’s gifts of vegetables.

Some of these unusual ingredients left me with a lifelong adventurous taste in food. But nothing really tastes as good as ‘stolen fruit’, and the young Greenies, often in the company of visiting cousins, would carry out commando-style raids on the succulent fruit locked so temptingly behind those garden doors. These thefts would surely have cost Dad his job had the laird caught us in the act. I like to believe it was not serious crime though, just a bit of innocent fun and adventure, since we left with only a pocketful of apples, pears or whatever was in season at the time. I was the youngest and was only tolerated on these raids because I might ‘spill the beans’ (excuse the pun) if left behind. To gain entry into the garden it was necessary for the culprits to climb the high garden wall. This was totally beyond my capabilities, so I was invariably left outside as lookout. I had the last laugh on one occasion though. While the others struggled to the top of the wall, leaving me complaining bitterly at the bottom, I tried the handle of the usually locked and bolted garden door which magically opened at my touch. I was in paradise and sampling my first tasty apple before the others had managed to scramble down the inner wall.

Ian being interviewed by Robbie Shepherd for ‘Summer Roads’, with producer Jennifer Forrest, at Rothes Primary School.

The Glen of Rothes years were a glorious period of my young life, despite the fact that the Second World War broke out just as I was about to enter the exciting, but slightly intimidating, world of strict Highland schooling. My first day at Rothes Primary School did not go well and when Elizabeth dropped me off at Primary One I was not a happy chap. Apparently I screamed and bawled the place down for the major part of that first fearful day – I wanted my Mam! I gradually settled into school routine however, even though this entailed a trek of several miles on foot some days. On winter mornings, the long, cold and sometimes stormy walk ended with a visit to the Rothes bakery shop where we were welcomed by the generous owner (who seemed in my young mind always covered in flour) with a hot ‘buttery’ (a kind of morning roll with high butter content) liberally spread with fresh butter. Why do only bakers in the north-east of Scotland know how to make butteries?

The primary school in Rothes holds no other nightmares for me, so I must have enjoyed my spell there. We always found things of interest at lunchtime or after school, such as a visit to the ‘smiddy’ (blacksmith’s shop) where you could watch big Clydesdale horses being shod. The smell of burning horse hoof, when the smithy stuck the newly-made, red-hot shoe onto the mighty hoof to check for size, is a smell I will remember always. One unusual caper by us schoolboys comes to mind though. The boys’ toilet (urinal) was not covered overhead, but the facing wall was fairly high in relation to small boys. The aspiration of all the boys in my class was to ‘pee’ over this wall, while the girls stood at a safe distance and watched for a stream emerging over the top. They seemed very impressed on such occasions, I have to say!

School summer holidays are imprinted indelibly on my mind because it was always sunny, or so it seemed, and we ran about in bare feet with the gamekeeper’s son (James Roy, I think) and visiting cousins – Betty and Alastair McIntyre, and Gertrude and Jack Tevendale – and the Smith family children, friends of Mam and Dad from the Greshop, I think. It seemed that we spent days on end building a raft (or was it a bridge?) to reach an island in a pond situated in the field opposite our house. We never reached the island but we certainly had great fun trying. Mam must have been fed up washing the mud out of our clothes, but strangely I don’t recall us getting into bother for what was probably a fairly risky escapade. No one drowned and none of us ever sustained more than a cut or bruise.

I did suffer a nasty accident a year or two earlier though, prior to attending school. My father was using a pick to dig a hole for some purpose and I was dangerously close to his rear when I saw something of interest being unearthed. I ran forward just as Dad brought the pick back over his shoulder to have another whack, when the blunt end of the pick met my forehead. I was knocked out and bled like a stuck pig, but apparently bounced back after a good bawl and without needing to be hospitalised. I assume by then I had earned the reputation for having a good pair of lungs! The scar was still visible when I subsequently joined the army, and was recorded as a ‘distinguishing mark’.

I remember clearly the day war was declared against Germany in 1939 because Mam’s sister, Aunty Jess (McIntyre), was visiting us. Quite an eccentric person in my view, she started wailing and moaning as the news came through on our old wet-and-dry battery-operated wireless, and pronounced, ‘We’ll a’ be deid soon.’ It all seemed hellishly exciting to me but, at that time, I did not have a clue as to the reality of war. Shortly after the declaration the Glen of Rothes Shooting Lodge and the extensive estate were requisitioned by the army for the duration of the war, as happened to many of the Highland estates. We found ourselves in the middle of a huge army training camp, which was very exciting for my brother Jimmy and me, but was the death knell of the lovely walled garden and the end of the shooting lodge. Dad was conscripted, joined the Army Catering Corps and was sent off for training as a cook, only to be involved in a bad shooting accident which caused him to be invalided out of the army.

Grandad Bonnyman came to stay in the small ‘bothy’ adjoining our house. He was recovering from a broken back, sustained in an almost fatal farming accident – he was thrown off the top of a cartload of corn sheaves when his Clydesdale horse suddenly moved forward. He was employed by the laird as the solitary caretaker/gardener. Dad had to take temporary employment at the local Glen Grant Whisky Distillery at Rothes while he recovered from his shotgun wounds and sought a new head gardener position. With few gardening skills, Grandad basically filled the walled garden with potatoes as part of the war effort (‘digging for victory’ as Winston Churchill described it). The decay of the greenhouses, flower borders and fruit trees began and, by the end of the war, the garden was an overgrown wilderness. Years later I revisited the Glen of Rothes to find the remains of the garden had been bulldozed aside. Gravel was being quarried from below, revealing the secret that this natural drainage had provided an essential ingredient for the fertile garden which flourished on an otherwise peat-covered Highland hillside.

Jimmy and I quickly made friends with the soldiers. Some were Dunkirk survivors and part of the 51st Highland Division, far from home and their families. Understandably we were almost adopted by these homesick souls with a vacuum to fill. We frequently hung about the cookhouse next door to our house for tasty handouts. We were spoiled rotten with treats of chocolate, already rationed and difficult to buy even if you had the necessary ration coupons, plus army slab fruitcake and more. Our new-found friends also introduced us to the bawdy language and crude jokes of the British soldier, much to Mam’s chagrin. One unforgettable highlight occurred when two soldier buddies gave me a lift to school in their Bren-gun carrier (complete with mounted machine gun) and deposited me at the school gates. I climbed out of that carrier in front of my school pals as proud as punch and, to further elevate my school standing, the teacher called me to the front of the class to give a blow-by-blow account of the journey. It was the proudest moment of my young life up to then and I was class hero for a long time!

Jimmy and I had other exploits which we undertook quite fearlessly from time to time – of which poor Mam knew nothing. One was to creep unnoticed onto the army firing range, which accommodated both small arms and artillery, often with bullets and shells flying towards the various targets. Not satisfied with this hugely dangerous prank, we’d then await the end of the firing exercises and departure of the soldiers when we’d search for discarded live ammunition. We’d then jam the .303 bullets into fence posts or dykes and ‘fire’ the rounds by placing a nail against the firing cap and whacking it with a stone. Where the bullet was likely to go without first passing down a rifle barrel was anyone’s guess, but fortunately no one was ever struck by the stray bullets. Occasionally we’d come across a live Thunderflash, used by the army to provide realistic battlefield explosions. These we would then hurl at each other until one day, inevitably, one ignited and exploded close to my face, causing a burn which we had great difficulty explaining away to Mam. How we were never seriously injured, or worse, is now a marvel to me. It all seemed like fun at the time – and certainly gave us a tale to tell at school.

Air raid warnings occurred from time to time and the soldiers would rush to machine-gun emplacements and, under the cover of the blackout, we’d creep up on a position and throw stones at them. Often we had to run for our lives when we scored a hit. To include all the exciting incidents and events of ‘life in an army training camp’ could fill another book but, suffice to say, the war was welcomed with open arms by two country ‘loons’ who would otherwise have grown up in a quiet rural environment.

Grandad Bonnyman was an incredible old character. Well over six feet tall with a back as straight as a rod, a white moustache and a shocking temper, he owned a wind-up gramophone and a substantial collection of Jimmy Shand and other 78rpm recordings. The gramophone made him a popular visitor to neighbours in the Glen, where even the battery-operated ‘wireless’ was still a novelty. Grandad would strap his gramophone and a few 78s onto his back, leap onto his old fashioned, high, upright bicycle and pedal off into the night to entertain some far-flung neighbour or ‘girlfriend’ (yes, he was a bit of a lad!) with this relatively new form of entertainment. When Jimmy or I were in his favour, which varied from week to week if not day to day, the favoured one would be invited into the sanctum of Grandad’s bothy to be plied with apples and other goodies, while being entertained by Jimmy Shand on the gramophone. I think his 78 collection was my very first introduction to Scotland’s traditional music and I vowed then that one day I’d have my own wind-up gramophone and record collection. It was to be 2009 before I purchased the wind-up, but the other half of that dream was achieved much more quickly, and I now have a huge collection of traditional music recordings on 78s, LPs, cassettes and CDs.

The first big journey I recall going on was one Saturday when Mam and Dad dressed us all up for a trip by bus to Elgin. This was an amazing journey for a wee guy like me – I actually believed Elgin was where the world ended (some people might agree!). I remember we were taken to the matinee at the ‘pictures’ (cinema) for the first time, but I have absolutely no idea what we saw. However, I do recall that we were then taken to a fish and chip shop for my first fish and chip tea. If you have never had a fish and chip tea you must do this soon before such places are no more. This was a grand day out and I remember falling asleep on the bus journey home – a happy and contented loon who had gone to the edge of the world and back!

During this period my entrepreneurship came to the surface and my first business enterprises were undertaken – picking and bunching snow-drops and daffodils off the estate and selling them on to Rothes florists earned the family a few pence; gathering the eggs of seagulls nesting on the nearby hillsides, which was also part of the war effort; tattie-howking; polishing soldiers’ boots, shining their uniform buttons or performing any task for a few pennies. Gathering seagull eggs off the hillside was fun but slightly dangerous because the seagulls did not take kindly to the theft of their forthcoming chicks and frequently dive-bombed us in an attempt to frighten us off. We must have had a sixth sense about which would be ‘good’ eggs (edible) as opposed to eggs that were close to hatching (inedible, of course) because, when we got them home and put them through the ‘water test’, we invariably had it right. I cannot recall now how it worked, but I think that if the egg sank it was close to hatching and if it floated it was okay. Strange that many years later I should join the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds – probably my conscience from the ’40s.

It was also at the Glen of Rothes that Jimmy and I tried our hands for the first time at smoking. The war was on and tobacco was scarce and, while Mam and Dad both smoked Woodbine, we resorted to rolled-up brown paper – absolutely disgusting. Anyway, we hid ourselves away in a wee shed to try out this adult caper and had a good fug (or fag) going when the door burst open and we met the full anger of Dad, not a man who roused easily. He gave us both a kick up the arse as we bolted for cover. Dad never held grudges for long though. I remember, during a really heavy fall of snow, he spent the day in his potting shed making sledges for us all, and arrived home in the evening with three of them. What enormous fun we had on a nearby slope with these home-made wooden sledges.

Glen of Rothes was the first place I tried my hand at fishing for trout. I fished in the nearby burn, armed with a worm on a hook at the end of a line attached to a bamboo cane. In a relatively short time I caught a wee trout which I carried home as proud as punch to Mam who promptly fried it for my tea.

As the war progressed Dad continued to work at Glen Grant Distillery, but on occasions he was coming home from night shift very drunk and one morning was found lying in a ditch beside his bicycle. The workers didn’t get drunk on whisky though. The Customs and Excise men ensured workers got only their then regulation ‘dram’ at their break and end of shift. The workers, including Dad, were drinking ‘ale’ – the malt mixture brewing in open vats before distillation began. This stuff had the potency of beer and, when taken regularly throughout the night when there was less supervision, plus the two free drams during the shift, was a recipe for disaster. The ‘free distillery dram’ was outlawed some years later for safety reasons.

This could not go on and fortunately Dad found a position as head gardener on the Lethen Estate near Auldearn. Once again the boxes were packed, the linoleum was rolled up, the paper stripped off the walls (only kidding) and we were on the move again. Lethen was another glorious place for a child to grow up and I settled down quickly. With one exception, I absolutely loved Lethen Estate and the surrounding area.

The exception was the headmaster of the local Fornighty School, Mr Fyffe. He was a fairly tall, straight man with a haircut which was ‘down to the bone’, penetrating and frightening eyes, exaggerated by very thick ‘bottle-bottom’ glasses and the most evil temper I have ever known in a man. The school had only two classrooms. One teacher, a lovely gentle girl named Pearl Campbell, taught the very young children, while he taught the classes up to the qualifying stage for secondary school. As I recall there were four rows of desks and each row in Fyffe’s room represented a different year. So, at any one time during the day he would be covering four different subjects – one class writing an essay maybe, another doing sums, another studying a history book and one class out at the blackboard having a geography lesson or such like.

We had only been at Fornighty School a day or two, and I was in the younger class, when I first suffered Fyffe’s brutality. We arrived at school one morning to learn that a telephone kiosk close to our home had been slightly damaged the previous afternoon, and the suspects were school kids. Jimmy and I had passed the telephone box and had seen some of our classmates in the kiosk, but had walked on. When interrogation began Fyffe immediately settled on us as the prime suspects but, after quizzing Jimmy briefly, for some unknown reason, he was released and I became the sole suspect – and as far as Fyffe was concerned I was guilty! But he wanted a confession and he resorted to violence to get it. (Remember the belt or tawse?) I got two of the belt and was then locked in a dark cupboard for ten minutes or so, with the threat that should I not admit causing the damage then punishment with the belt would be increased. I came out of the cupboard still unable to admit to something I hadn’t done. Four of the belt followed, then back into the dark cupboard for another ten minutes. Out of the cupboard to six more of the belt, still no admission, and back into the cupboard again. Now remember, this was happening to a young boy not even ten years of age, so what did I do when I was back in total darkness? Well, self-preservation must have taken over and, when I again emerged, petrified and with my hands now stinging badly, I could only blurt out – ‘It was me that done it sir.’ I was then marched in front of both classrooms and made to confess again to each.

You might ask, why did I not go home and report this assault to my parents and have this madman, because that is what I thought he was, removed from the teaching profession? Well, this was the ’40s when corporal punishment was still administered in schools. More importantly I suppose, in those days, the head teacher, the doctor, the local minister, the laird and the local ‘bobby’ were all regarded as pillars of society who could do no wrong. (We know better now.) I did go home that afternoon and tried to explain, but the predictable parental reply in those days was, ‘If you got the belt at school, you must have deserved it.’ End of story. It taught me one very important lesson though, which stood me in good stead in later years as a police officer: that forcing an admission out of a suspect is no guarantee you have the actual culprit, and quite rightly the law demands proof!

By the time I went into Fyffe’s class Jimmy had moved on to Nairn Academy some six miles away. Rattling pupils’ heads severely against the blackboard or wall was another of Fyffe’s delights. One day he grabbed my classmate Mary (who I was already having romantic notions about) and rattled her so severely that poor Mary peed herself in front of the entire classroom, while I stood rigid as urine splashed against my bare legs. My romantic notions died in that terrible moment! Few days passed without someone in our classroom, especially me, suffering the belt at his hands. Not for misbehaving, I hasten to add, as was the intended use of the tawse in the educational system of that time, but for spelling or sum errors which could not be instantly corrected. In my memory, no one ever misbehaved in that classroom. Fear ensured that.

One last incident relating to Fyffe before I move on to all the good things about Lethen, is one which, in retrospect, brings a smile (black humour, I suppose). During the war all schools were encouraged by the government to grow vegetables on school land as part of the dig for victory campaign, and he was enthusiastic – although it was us poor kids who had to do all the work, while he and the school kitchen benefited from the fresh vegetables. Fyffe also moved his beehives into the school garden and, as you can imagine, children and bees do not mix well. One day, when all the kids were out weeding in the garden, bee-stings became more frequent as we neared the front of the hives. An impromptu meeting of my fellow pupils was held and they unanimously elected Ian Green, as the oldest boy (and having surprisingly survived a year or two of Fyffe’s brutality), to report the excessive bee problem. I need hardly say his reaction was extreme, and the entire class was threatened with the belt. I did not utter another word, ran from the classroom and, for the next half-hour, any passer-by was treated to the hilarious sight of one kid at a time racing to the front of the hives, grabbing a handful of weeds and then racing out, with the free hand flailing at the angry bees. Humorous to imagine perhaps but, for my classmates, it was a straight choice of bee-stings or Fyffe’s belt. The bees won hands down. The highest number of stings that day to one pupil was, as I recall, six!

Near the end of my time at Fornighty School, Fyffe moved to Elgin to take up the position of headmaster of Elgin Academy. (Somebody must have thought highly of him.) I would like to think he was from then on deskbound and far less likely to be in daily physical contact with kids. By contrast, his replacement was an absolute gentleman, brought out of retirement to help the war effort and, for the first time, we actually had a school sports day. I always found it difficult when Fyffe called on my father, presumably to scrounge spring bedding and vegetable plants. The sight of Dad and this monster chatting and laughing was something I could not reconcile in my head. To this day, every time I pass Fornighty School, now converted into houses, I get out of my car and shout to the sky, ‘Fyffe you are a bastard!’ – to the eternal embarrassment of my wife June.

Ian being interviewed by Robbie Shepherd for ‘Summer Roads’, with producer Jennifer Forrest, at Lethen Estate.

Thankfully Lethen was not all violence and I have wonderful memories of our neighbours the countryside with its bountiful supply of hazelnuts and wild fruit trout and sea-trout to catch in the Muckle Burn cattle we herded for miles along country roads to new grazing and riding on the back of the estate’s beautiful Clydesdale horse, which would walk miles back home to its own stable while the estate forester, Alan Grant, stopped to chat to friends. Helping the mole-catcher and the gamekeeper to catch moles and rabbits respectively was very exciting, often resulting in a rabbit to take home for Mam to make a sumptuous rabbit stew.

Some of our other neighbours included the Smart family – son Pat and daughters Jean and Mary – farming the nearby Burnside Farm where I first ‘picked tatties’ (gathered potatoes), backbreaking stuff, but great when Mr Smart came to pay us. Jocky Taylor was the estate joiner and Geordie Mackie the blacksmith. They were all lovely people.

As his part of the war effort, Dad would buy a wee piglet from time to time. It was kept in a wooden shelter in the wood behind our house where it was fattened up with Dad’s excess potatoes and vegetables. Every new pig became a pet. (Did you know that they love having their backs scratched with a Dutch hoe?) It was a terrible experience when the butcher arrived on the day of slaughter. We were chased away, but always crawled back through the bushes to witness the kill – even though we cried our hearts out seeing our pet meet its end with a whack over the head and its throat cut. All illegal, I’d imagine. I believe the arrangement was that the butcher kept half the pig and the other half was returned to Dad, all cured and ready to augment what was already a good diet, despite rationing.

Mam, for her part, kept chickens, ducks and turkeys in a hen run which was supposed to be hen-proof, but Jimmy and I spent a lot of time rounding the little buggers up after they had escaped to the freedom of the woods. Our diet was also varied by the occasional catch of trout or a sea-trout, caught or even poached by the Greenie brothers. Jimmy was invariably the ringleader and the expert but both of us were paraded by Dad in front of the Auldearn bobby and given our first ‘Police Warning’ for spearing a couple of sea-trout locked in a pool during a drought. We were spotted by a passing motorist (few and far between in those days) who reported the two ‘big-time poachers’. The same policeman was rumoured to be a bit of a poacher himself. It was certainly confirmed that, when he went fishing legally, his favourite bait was maggots (you know, these horrible wee white things you get in rotten meat). His method of placing these onto his hook was to pop half a dozen into his mouth and then, one at time, impale these disgusting creatures on his hook!

We roamed the country far and wide, occasionally chasing wild ponies which we never caught. For lunch, we’d collect pheasant eggs, which we would boil on a wee fire and then consume – the gamekeeper must have wondered where his pheasant eggs were going. It might seem as if we had no conscience, but that was not entirely true. Not far from our house, there was a small camp of Italian prisoners of war whom we befriended. They worked on local farms and were unguarded, free to come and go as they pleased in their easily identifiable jackets and trousers with coloured diamond and other shaped patches. To augment their meagre rations, the prisoners trapped wild birds, such as blackbirds and thrushes, and kept them in cages until they wanted a couple for dinner. We thought it was cruel. So we regularly sneaked up on their huts and released the birds from the cages, to the fury of the prisoners.

We had a pal, Robbie MacKenzie, who lived close to the Italian prisoners. He had what looked like a real Colt revolver in a holster, and we were so jealous of this. I do believe it was a real weapon which had been altered, and the barrel blocked so that it could not be fired, but for two cowboy fanatics Robbie was a hero.

Just across the small valley from our house at Lethen, there was a small farm – Mill Croft – managed by Jimmy and Mamie Urquhart. They were lovely, generous people but the house and croft were just a muddle. Jimmy never spent enough time working the fields and was ‘always behind, like the coo’s tail’ – as people used to say. They had generously taken into their home a man called Alec who had been released into their care from a mental institution. I understand the arrangement was that they supplied him with all his needs, plus some fags, and in return he did some manual work on the croft. He was, apparently, a well-educated businessman who had suffered a severe nervous breakdown and never recovered. Alec was a lovely, gentle man but had little conversation, other than sentences, such as, ‘Nice lads, aye nice lads,’ which he repeated over and over again. Alec seemed to live in a wee world of his own. He was able to clean out the cow-shed and even thin neeps (turnip seedlings) with a hoe in the field, plus other fairly simple tasks. Jimmy and I would often help him with these tasks because everyone in the district tried to help Mamie and Jimmy. Alec was cared for pretty well by the Urquharts, but I always had the feeling he was treated no better or no worse than most people would treat their pet. It just seemed so sad that an intelligent man had come to this.

Dad encouraged his sons to become involved in gardening and gave each of us a small plot